Est. 1936 · Adaptive Reuse · Georgia Trust Preservation Award · Mid-Century Healthcare
Robert Jenks Taylor Sr. donated $100,000 to the city of Hawkinsville in 1936 for the construction of a hospital named in memory of his father and grandfather. The R.J. Taylor Memorial Hospital opened shortly thereafter and served the community for four decades. Local references describe the building as Gothic-influenced in massing and detailing, with the kind of brick institutional architecture common to mid-1930s Southern public health construction.
The hospital closed in 1977 when Taylor Regional Hospital opened on the north side of Hawkinsville. The original facility passed through a series of owners and slowly deteriorated through the late 20th and early 21st centuries. During that period it became a fixture on regional 'abandoned Georgia' photography tours and was used several times as a Halloween haunted-house attraction. It also appeared briefly on the short-lived cable program 'Ghost Stalkers,' which was canceled after six episodes.
In 2016, Atlanta-based TBG Residential acquired the building. A multi-year rehabilitation, recognized by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, stabilized and repaired the roof and converted the hospital into 34 mostly one-bedroom apartments. Taylor Village opened with a ribbon-cutting in October 2019. The Georgia Trust noted the project preserved key interior features alongside exterior masonry restoration.
The Shadowlands listing under the name 'Hawkinsville State Hospital' is a misnomer; the facility was a private community hospital, not a state institution. The current property is private residential housing and is not open to public access.
Sources
- https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news/local/historic-hawkinsville-hospital-gets-new-life/93-233d108e-3fac-4b23-a4e5-7ea050d72b14
- https://www.georgiatrust.org/preservation-awards/r-j-taylor-memorial-hospital/
- https://autopsyofarchitecture.com/taylor-memorial-hospital/
Cold spotsEVPPhantom voicesShadow figures
While the building stood empty between 1977 and the mid-2010s, it acquired the layered reputation common to abandoned Southern hospitals. Paranormal investigators and Halloween attraction operators used the space, and visitors during those events reported voices that did not correspond to other people in the building, dark figures glimpsed at the edges of vision, and cold pockets in former patient wards.
The Shadowlands narrative emphasizes audible noises, cold spots, and EVP recordings, framing the location as 'a must for any paranormal investigator' and noting that permission from owners was required even at the time of submission. That posture was appropriate; the building was always private property, never the publicly accessible ruin some Georgia abandoned-place lore implies.
The property's role on the cable program 'Ghost Stalkers' was brief. The series, which aired on Destination America in 2014, was canceled after six episodes; the Hawkinsville segment is among the published material that survived its short run.
With the 2019 conversion to Taylor Village apartments, the building's role as an investigation site ended. It is now occupied workforce housing, and the interior is no longer accessible. The folklore that accumulated over four decades of vacancy is part of the building's documented history, but it does not describe a current visitable experience.
Media Appearances
- Ghost Stalkers (Destination America, 2014)